Costolo Out, Dorsey In as Twitter CEO

Costolo Out, Dorsey In as Twitter CEO

Dick Costolo has been the CEO for the last 5 years, making his the longest-term CEO in the company's history. That fact is a strange one in a town that reveres company founders, often times to a fault. Twitter's founders have had varying degrees of involvement in the company since its early days, leaving the daily activities to Costolo instead. He has had his ups and downs, but recently his new programs have begun to see some early returns.

Despite these new successes, Twitter has announced that Costolo will step down as CEO on July 1, 2015. This comes on the heels of a nearly complete management shake-up last year, where the board replaced almost the entire management team, still leaving Costolo at the top of the company. The constant pressure from Wall Street following the company's 2013 IPO may just have proven too much for him. Confiding in a close group in January, it seems that he was looking for a way out.

Allowing him a quick out, the board has reached out to Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of the company, and a former CEO, to lead the charge while the board searches for Costolo's true successor. Dorsey has his work cut out for him, needing to figure out the company's plan to retain users, attract new ones and position its product for a purpose. He also needs to figure out a way to make using the majority of the features possible. For example, have you ever tried to follow a conversation? It's just short of impossible. While dealing with all of that, he also needs to assess and adjust Costolo's policies to deal with the problem of user abuse that has become off-putting for many.

Meanwhile, the board will search for a permanent replacement for Costolo. This is important because Dorsey cannot continue to run the company long. In addition to his new duties at Twitter, he is also founder and CEO of Square, one of the country's largest payment systems. He will not be leaving his duties at Square, he is merely adding these new responsibilities at Twitter. Hopefully Twitter will solve the problem quickly.

The other possibility, rather than replacing the CEO, is selling the company. There has been talk in the industry that Google and Twitter have been in talks, with expectations that the talks surround an acquisition. The collapse of Google+, both in the public eye and inside the company, could be an indication that Google is giving up the ghost and replacing it with Twitter could help them learn as much as possible about people to better target their ads. The recent reintegration of Twitter into search results, side-by-side with Google+, adds more fuel to that fire.

Whether Twitter decides to go the acquisition route, or searches for the perfect person to lead the team, it needs to happen quickly, because there are plenty of other products for following the world in real time, many are far better.